rs time to get out of their way.

The walls and ceilings were covered with the plaster which would dry the
quickest, and the paper-hangers entered the rooms almost before the
plasterers could take away their trowels and their lime-begrimed hats
and coats. Cleaners with their brooms and pails jostled the mechanics,
as the latter left the various rooms, and everywhere strode Mr. Burke.
He had made up his mind that the building must be ready to move into the
instant it arrived at its final destination.

It was a very different building from what Mrs. Cliff had proposed to
herself when she decided to add a dining-room to her old house. It was
so different indeed, that after having gone two or three times to look
upon the piles of lumber and stone and the crowds of men, digging, and
hammering, and sawing on the corner lot, she had decided to leave the
whole matter in the hands of Mr. Burke, the architect, and the
contractor. And when Willy Croup endeavored to explain to her what was
going on, she always stopped her, saying that she would wait until it
was done and then she would understand it.

Mr. Burke too had urged her, especially as the building drew near to
completion, not to bother herself in the least about it, but to give him
the pleasure of presenting it to her entirely finished and ready for
occupancy. So even the painting and paper-hanging had been left to a
professional decorator, and Mrs. Cliff assured Burke that she was
perfectly willing to wait for the new dining-room until it was ready for
her.

This dining-room, large and architecturally handsome, was planned, as
has been said, so that one of its doors should fit exactly against the
side hall door of the little house, but the other door of the
dining-room opened into a wide and elegant hall, at one end of which was
a portico and spacious front steps. On the other side of this hall was a
handsome drawing-room, and behind the drawing-room and opening into it,
an alcove library with a broad piazza at one side of it. Back of the
dining-room was a spacious kitchen, with pantries, closets, scullery,
and all necessary adjuncts.

In the second and third stories of the edifice were large and beautiful
bedrooms, small and neat bedrooms, bath-rooms, servants' rooms,
trunk-rooms, and every kind of room that modern civilization demands.

Now that the building was finished, Mr. Burke almost regretted that he
had not constructed it upon the top of a hill in order tha